Chucuito, on Lake Titicaca

We are in the tiny village of Chucuito, on the shores of Lake Titicaca! It´s 19 km outside of Puno, still in Peru. We are staying in a lodge called Albergue Las Cabañas, which is beautiful. We have a big room with our own bathroom, and a sunroom in front. That´s really nice after Cusco, which was cold and shady since it´s a big city. Now we can bask in the sun and our room stays warm because of the sun room, too. None of the hotel rooms have heat around here. It´s nice to be in a room that is warm and cozy and clean. We can see the lake out the front window. They also have a dining room, and serve really good vegetarian soups.

This village is small and dusty, with dirt (or grass since there are no vehicles) streets between stone walls. Everyone is friendly. Most travelers only spend a night here, I think, because there is nothing to do. But we have been here for four days because we were looking for a place to relax and settle into this new pace of life. We have been reading books (my friend Sue gave me Eat, Pray, Love which is a wonderful book to read while on a journey) and walking to the lake and just generally hanging out. It´s perfect.

We went to a wedding yesterday! The bride was the daughter of the people who own the cabañas where we are staying. It was outdoors, and informal, and really nice. The alcalde, or mayor, performed the ceremony which consisted of reading from the Peruvian civil code for marriages. He lectured the couple about abuse, told them that psychological abuse is just as bad as physical abuse. He told them that now they must make decisions together, and that if they have problems during the marriage they should try to work out the problems but if they cannot work it out, then a judge will decide who gets the children, and it´s best to avoid that. I thought it was interesting to hear such a lecture during a wedding!

Then they had a feast, and we got to to try some of the many varieties of Peruvian potatoes, as well as converse with the other wedding guests. It was fun to hang out with a family and get to know people in that setting. The wedding was small and simple and really nice. No cake, but plenty of champagne, whiskey, wine and beer.

Chucuito has a ruin: the Temple of Fertility. To represent fertility, it´s full of stone phallic symbols!

The plazas are quiet. Yesterday we watched a woman wash her hair in a bucket in the middle of the plaza in front of the church.

On our first day here, we met an Aymara grandmother named Jacinta. We were walking down to look at the lake, and the path ended leaving us looking at Jacinta´s flock of sheep. (everywhere here, in the middle of town, are women tending flocks of sheep). Jacinta speaks Aymara and Spanish, and raises sheep and a cow. She also plants potatoes of several varieties. Her husband used to fish, but she´s a widow now. Jacinta liked my purple crocs that MJ gave me, my most comfortable traveling shoes. She said she wished I had brought a pair for her. Mine would never fit her, nor do I want to give them away, so I gave her a pair of earrings that I had brought from the U.S. So that is how we ended up drinking beer and dancing with Jacinta at 8:30 this morning!

It turns out that we accidentally happened to arrive in Chucuito a few days before their biggest annual fiesta, which lasts for a week, and today was the first day. I woke up at 5:30 a.m. hearing drumming and Andean flute music. By the time we made it to the plaza at about 8 a.m. the fiesta was well underway with the drummers and flute players, a band, dancing, and mostly a lot of beer. Jacinta spotted us and invited us to hang out with her group of friends. She was wearing a beautiful full skirt and petticoats and a beautiful embroidered shawl, all gold. Even gold shoes. She was with a friend who was dressed the same. The main thing to do during this fiesta, it seems, is to drink beer. Jacinta pours herself a tiny bit of beer in a glass, then hands the bottle to me, says "salud" and drinks some, dumps the rest of her glass on the ground. (must be some significance to that -- I´m not sure). Then, she hand me the glass and I do the same, passing the bottle to someone else, and so on. I cut myself off at 9 a.m. Fortunately, you don´t have to actually drink a lot of beer since you can get away with dumping most of it on the ground if you want to. Not everyone at the fiesta was going for that. We met a Belgian journalist who has been touring South America by bicycle for 3 years, and we all danced. The party seemed to go on, pretty much the same, and we´re taking a break from it now.

Tonight there will be fireworks. We saw them setting them up. Huge contraptions, with wheels that spin, etc, similar to fireworks I´ve seen in Mexico. Today there were also many gunpowder explosions. Someone draws a line of gunpowder in front of the church, and after awhile someone lights it on fire. We almost stepped on the gunpowder by accident, not knowing it was there! (we´ll watch out for that next time). This fiesta will go on all week. Since everyone was drinking so much this morning, I wonder if anyone will even be awake this evening for the fireworks!

This town does seem to have a problem with alcoholism. Even before the fiesta started, we saw people passed out in the street, or staggering down the street, every day. This town is very poor with no industry except for subsistence agriculture. We´ve been approached by drunk people on the street, but they didn´t seem dangerous.

There are no real stores as we would think of them here, just houses with a front door open to the street, stocked with a few things you can buy. Mostly Inca Kola, their version of coke. And the restaurants don´t seem to have anything to cook with except vegetable oil, which Gary can´t eat. So we´ve taken to bringing our own bottle of olive oil to restaurants, which works great. So far, people have been happy to specially prepare Gary´s meal in our olive oil. Everywhere we´ve been in Peru, people have been extremely friendly and helpful with everything. I´m so glad we came here.